Leviticus, 25

1. "Do not make false gods for yourselves. You shall not erect an idol or a sacred pillar for yourselves, nor shall you set up a stone figure for worship in your land; for I, the LORD, am your God.

1. Yahweh spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai and said:

2. Keep my sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary. I am the LORD.

2. 'Speak to the Israelites and say to them: "When you enter the country which I am giving you, the land must keep a Sabbath's rest for Yahweh.

3. "If you live in accordance with my precepts and are careful to observe my commandments,

3. For six years you will sow your field, for six years you will prune your vineyard and gather its produce.

4. I will give you rain in due season, so that the land will bear its crops, and the trees their fruit;

4. But in the seventh year the land will have a sabbatical rest, a Sabbath for Yahweh. You will neither sow your field, nor prune your vineyard,

5. your threshing will last till vintage time, and your vintage till the time for sowing, and you will have food to eat in abundance, so that you may dwell securely in your land.

5. nor reap any grain which has grown of its own accord, nor gather the grapes from your untrimmed vine. It will be a year of rest for the land.

6. I will establish peace in the land, that you may lie down to rest without anxiety. I will rid the country of ravenous beasts, and keep the sword of war from sweeping across your land.

6. But what the land produces in its Sabbath will serve to feed you, your slave, male or female, your employee and your guest residing with you;

7. You will rout your enemies and lay them low with your sword.

7. for your cattle too, and the wild animals of your country, whatever it produces will serve as food.

8. Five of you will put a hundred of your foes to flight, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand of them, till they are cut down by your sword.

8. "You will count seven weeks of years -- seven times seven years, that is to say a period of seven weeks of years, forty-nine years.

9. I will look with favor upon you, and make you fruitful and numerous, as I carry out my covenant with you.

9. And on the tenth day of the seventh month you will sound the trumpet; on the Day of Expiation you will sound the trumpet throughout the land.

10. So much of the old crops will you have stored up for food that you will have to discard them to make room for the new.

10. You will declare this fiftieth year to be sacred and proclaim the liberation of all the country's inhabitants. You will keep this as a jubilee: each of you will return to his ancestral property, each to his own clan.

11. I will set my Dwelling among you, and will not disdain you.

11. This fiftieth year will be a jubilee year for you; in it you will not sow, you will not harvest the grain that has come up on its own or in it gather grapes from your untrimmed vine.

12. Ever present in your midst, I will be your God, and you will be my people;

12. The jubilee will be a holy thing for you; during it you will eat whatever the fields produce.

13. for it is I, the LORD, your God, who brought you out of the land of the Egyptians and freed you from their slavery, breaking the yoke they had laid upon you and letting you walk erect.

13. "In this year of jubilee, each of you will return to his ancestral property.

14. "But if you do not heed me and do not keep all these commandments,

14. If you buy land from, or sell land to, your fellow-countryman, neither of you may exploit the other.

15. if you reject my precepts and spurn my decrees, refusing to obey all my commandments and breaking my covenant,

15. In buying from your fellow-countryman, you will take account of the number of years since the jubilee; the sale-price he fixes for you will depend on the number of productive years still to run.

16. then I, in turn, will give you your deserts. I will punish you with terrible woes--with wasting and fever to dim the eyes and sap the life. You will sow your seed in vain, for your enemies will consume the crop.

16. The greater the number of years, the higher the price you will ask for it; the fewer the number of years, the greater the reduction; for what he is selling you is a certain number of harvests.

17. I will turn against you, till you are beaten down before your enemies and lorded over by your foes. You will take to flight though no one pursues you.

17. So you will not exploit one another, but fear your God, for I am Yahweh your God.

18. "If even after this you do not obey me, I will increase the chastisement for your sins sevenfold,

18. "Hence, you will put my laws and customs into practice; you will keep them and put them into practice, and you will live securely in the country.

19. to break your haughty confidence. I will make the sky above you as hard as iron, and your soil as hard as bronze,

19. The land will give its fruit, and you will eat your fill and live in security.

20. so that your strength will be spent in vain; your land will bear no crops, and its trees no fruit.

20. "In case you should ask: What shall we eat in this seventh year if we do not sow or harvest our produce?

21. "If then you become defiant in your unwillingness to obey me, I will multiply my blows another sevenfold, as your sins deserve.

21. I shall order my blessing to be on you in the sixth year, which will yield you enough produce for three years.

22. I will unleash the wild beasts against you, to rob you of your children and wipe out your livestock, till your population dwindles away and your roads become deserted.

22. You will have the old produce to eat while you are sowing in the eighth year, and even in the ninth year, you will be eating the old produce, while waiting for the harvest of that year.

23. "If, with all this, you still refuse to be chastened by me and continue to defy me,

23. "Land will not be sold absolutely, for the land belongs to me, and you are only strangers and guests of mine.

24. I, too, will defy you and will smite you for your sins seven times harder than before.

24. You will allow a right of redemption over any ancestral property.

25. I will make the sword, the avenger of my covenant, sweep over you. Though you then huddle together in your walled cities, I will send in pestilence among you, till you are forced to surrender to the enemy.

25. If your brother becomes impoverished and sells off part of his ancestral property, his nearest male relative will come and exercise his family rights over what his brother has sold.

26. And as I cut off your supply of bread, ten women will need but one oven for baking all the bread they dole out to you in rations--not enough food to still your hunger.

26. The man who has no one to exercise this right may, once he has found the means to effect the redemption,

27. "If, despite all this, you still persist in disobeying and defying me,

27. calculate the number of years that the alienation would have lasted, repay to the purchaser the sum due for the time still to run, and so recover his ancestral property.

28. I, also, will meet you with fiery defiance and will chastise you with sevenfold fiercer punishment for your sins,

28. If he cannot find the sum in compensation, the property sold will remain in the possession of the purchaser until the jubilee year. In the jubilee year, the latter will vacate it and return to his own ancestral property.

29. till you begin to eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters.

29. "If anyone sells a dwelling house inside a walled town, he will have the right of redemption until the expiry of the year following the sale. His right of redemption is limited to the year;

30. I will demolish your high places, overthrow your incense stands, and cast your corpses on those of your idols. In my abhorrence of you,

30. and if the redemption has not been effected by the end of the year, the house in the walled town will become the property of the purchaser and his descendants in perpetuity; he need not vacate it at the jubilee.

31. I will lay waste your cities and devastate your sanctuaries, refusing to accept your sweet-smelling offerings.

31. But houses in villages not enclosed by walls will be considered as situated in the open country; they carry the right of redemption, and the purchaser will vacate them at the jubilee.

32. So devastated will I leave the land that your very enemies who come to live there will stand aghast at the sight of it.

32. "As regards the towns of the Levites, town houses forming part of their ancestral property will carry a perpetual right of redemption in their favour.

33. You yourselves I will scatter among the nations at the point of my drawn sword, leaving your countryside desolate and your cities deserted.

33. If a Levite is the one to be affected by the right of redemption, at the jubilee he will vacate the purchased property and return to his own home, to the town in which he has a title to property. The houses in the Levites' towns represent their ancestral property in Israel,

34. Then shall the land retrieve its lost sabbaths during all the time it lies waste, while you are in the land of your enemies; then shall the land have rest and make up for its sabbaths

34. and the arable land depending on these towns cannot be sold, being their ancestral property for ever.

35. during all the time that it lies desolate, enjoying the rest that you would not let it have on the sabbaths when you lived there.

35. "If your brother becomes impoverished and cannot support himself in the community, you will assist him as you would a stranger or guest, so that he can go on living with you.

36. "Those of you who survive in the lands of their enemies I will make so fainthearted that, if leaves rustle behind them, they will flee headlong, as if from the sword, though no one pursues them;

36. Do not charge him interest on a loan, but fear your God, and let your brother live with you.

37. stumbling over one another as if to escape a weapon, while no one is after them--so helpless will you be to take a stand against your foes!

37. You will not lend him money on interest or give him food to make a profit out of it.

38. You will be lost among the Gentiles, swallowed up in your enemies' country.

38. I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and be your God.

39. Those of you who survive in the lands of their enemies will waste away for their own and their fathers' guilt.

39. "If your brother becomes impoverished while with you and sells himself to you, you will not make him do the work of a slave;

40. "Thus they will have to confess that they and their fathers were guilty of having rebelled against me and of having defied me,

40. you will treat him like an employee or guest, and he will work for you until the jubilee year.

41. so that I, too, had to defy them and bring them into their enemies' land. Then, when their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they make amends for their guilt,

41. He will then leave you, both he and his children, and return to his clan and regain possession of his ancestral property.

42. I will remember my covenant with Jacob, my covenant with Isaac, and my covenant with Abraham; and of the land, too, I will be mindful.

42. For they are my servants whom I have brought out of Egypt, and they may not be bought and sold as slaves.

43. But the land must first be rid of them, that in its desolation it may make up its lost sabbaths, and that they, too, may make good the debt of their guilt for having spurned my precepts and abhorred my statutes.

43. You will not oppress your brother-Israelites harshly but will fear your God.

44. Yet even so, even while they are in their enemies' land, I will not reject or spurn them, lest, by wiping them out, I make void my covenant with them; for I, the LORD, am their God.

44. "The male and female slaves you have will come from the nations round you; from these you may purchase male and female slaves.

45. I will remember them because of the covenant I made with their forefathers, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt under the very eyes of the Gentiles, that I, the LORD, might be their God."

45. As slaves, you may also purchase the children of aliens resident among you, and also members of their families living with you who have been born on your soil; and they will become your property,

46. These are the precepts, decrees and laws which the LORD had Moses promulgate on Mount Sinai in the pact between himself and the Israelites.

46. and you may leave them as a legacy to your sons after you as their perpetual possession. These you may have for slaves; but you will not oppress your brother-Israelites.

47.

47. "If a stranger or guest living with you gets rich and your brother, in the course of dealings with him, becomes impoverished and sells himself to this stranger or guest, or to the descendant of a stranger's family,

48.

48. he will enjoy the right of redemption after being sold, and one of his brothers may redeem him.

49.

49. His paternal uncle, his uncle's son, or a member of his own family may redeem him; if he has the means, he may redeem himself.

50.

50. By agreement with his purchaser, he will count the number of years between the year of sale and the jubilee year; his sale-price will be proportionate to the number of years, his time being valued as that of an employee.

51.

51. If there are still many years to run, in proportion to their number he will refund part of his sale-price as payment for his redemption.

52.

52. And if there are only a few years still to run before the jubilee year, he will calculate with him what should be refunded for his redemption, in proportion to their number,

53.

53. as though he were hired by the year. You will see to it that he is not harshly oppressed.

54.

54. "If he has not been redeemed in any of these ways, he will go free in the jubilee year, both he and his children;

55.

55. for the Israelites are my servants; they are my servants whom I brought out of Egypt. I am Yahweh your God." '